Full Inclusion
by Julia456
Summary: Post 'Mainstream'. And now for the SECOND day of school...
1. Jean

Disclaimer haiku: Marvel owns, not me;/ Don't sue, for teachers have no/ Money anyway. 

Note: So. "Inclusion" and "mainstream" are different things, although people use them fairly interchangeably. "Mainstream" implies that special-education students are placed in regular classes and receive little to no accommodations. "Inclusion" means that special-ed students are put in regular classes and continue to receive significant accommodations.

I should probably say that I'm majoring in special education. Fear the preservice teacher:)

This takes place between "Mainstream" and "The Stuff of Villains".

Edit Note 7/24/07: After I was reminded (thanks Folk Ballad!) that I still had underscores, not italics, I went back and fixed that.

* * *

Truth? Losing the soccer MVP trophy hurt more than losing the boyfriend.

It was unkind, Jean knew, but she'd _worked_ for that trophy, all season, while Duncan had just... happened. Okay, so she'd pursued him, a little, at first, but the rest of it had all been him. Much to her displeasure yesterday. What an _idiot_.

The scary thing was, she could easily imagine spending the rest of her high-school career chained to his side. Thank God for anti-mutant fanatics and giant robots and news choppers.

_That's right, find the silver lining_, she told herself, mentally rolling her eyes. Sometimes she felt like playing the mutant version of Pollyanna was all she ever did.

Jean sighed, stabbed a spoon into her bowl of cereal, and turned around to head for the temporary table in their temporary kitchen. She hadn't taken a step when she collided with another person - Scott, in fact, although that didn't stop the milk and cereal from sloshing out of the bowl. She caught it all automatically with her telekinesis.

"Whoa - sorry," he said, reaching out to steady her anyway. Heat flared at the point of contact. Things like that had been happening more and more frequently - things that made her breath catch and fire light her blood - and it was all just a matter of time now, she knew. She still saw no reason to rush into anything.

"It's okay," she said, flashing a little smile, and sat down next to Mr. McCoy, who was working his way through a stack of dry toast and the newspaper.

"I heard about your speech last night," Mr. McCoy commented to her. "Nicely done."

She smiled into her bowl. Privately, she considered it a small miracle that the School Board members had voted the way they did, because her speech hadn't been that good. "Thank you."

"You know, if we really want to make sure you stay in school, we should get all of you staffed into ESE," he went on, shoving another piece of toast into his mouth. "Then BHS would have to provide you with FAPE or risk legal action."

Rogue paused long enough in picking at her breakfast to look up and ask, "FAPE?" Mr. McCoy nodded. "It stands for 'Free and Appropriate Public Education' - which you would receive in your LRE, or 'Least Restrictive Environment.' As mandated by the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act." He grinned, showing a bit of fang and a lot of toast crumbs. "I've been brushing up on my educational law. Fascinating, the things you can find in your local library."

Rogue made a noise that Jean couldn't quite decipher. "I'll just bet."

Mr. McCoy went back to his newspaper, evidently finished with the discussion.

"I don't know," Kurt said, wrinkling his nose. "I mean, we're already freaks. I've seen how the 'exceptional students' get treated - ESE comes with its own stigmas attached at no extra charge."

Kitty gave him an indignant look. "Hey! _I'm_ ESE, thank you very much. It's not just, um, slow kids. It's everyone who needs special services."

"Really?"

"Yeah, I have like an IEP and everything. Only they call it something else, I forget what."

Jean tuned out the rest of their conversation, too busy bracing herself for the coming day. Had she been popular for so long that she'd forgotten what it felt like to be one of the outcasts? It hurt. It was a slap in the face. At the same time, she'd known all along that her "friendships" among the elite circles had been tenuous creations at best. Popularity was a game - a shifting, nebulous dance of social skills. She'd loved the game; it had come easily to her. And now it was gone.

Mr. McCoy got up and so did Rogue. Kurt and Kitty wandered off a few minutes later. Evan had eaten with the younger kids; Scott had long since finished and vanished into the depths of the basement. But Jean was still sitting there, staring at her bowl of half-eaten cereal.

She knew that if she didn't hurry up, she'd be late for school. And for the first time in a long time, the thought caused her no distress.


	2. Rogue

Truth? The post-revelation status was just the old one to the _n_th degree.

Rogue had always prided herself on being different, on not giving in to the brainless sheep mentality of pop culture. She'd never measured herself by the yardstick of popularity - just the opposite, actually - and making her classmates flinch away from her cultivated strangeness was something to celebrate.

So the stares and the comments as the X-Men walked into school just made her lift her chin higher. What did those idiots know anyway?

"-freaks need to go home," someone muttered as Rogue went down the lines of lockers.

_Wannabe poser_, she thought, dismissing him as easily as she had when people muttered about her just because she wore black clothes and Gothic makeup.

"I always knew she was too weird to be human," someone else "whispered" in the tone of voice used by malicious gossipers who wanted to be heard.

Rogue recognized the voice and whipped her head around to glare at the speaker. "And how would _you_ know, _Taryn_?" she snapped. "With your eyes all over Scott - surprised you even ever _saw_ me."

Taryn tossed her hair and moved off with her groupies following in a close, whispering bunch.

Rogue wished ill on the hypocrite and went on to her locker. She pulled out her books for her first two classes and slammed the door shut on a bunch of football players talking bad about mutants.

When they saw her, they elbowed each other and started to shamble over to her, forming a human wall around her.

"You mind?" she asked, pointedly refusing to be either cowed or impressed. "Some of us have to get to class."

They ignored her. "Hey, did you like the mural we painted for you freaks?" one of them said, leering.

"I'm sorry, did you say something?" she asked, pressing one hand to her chest and even going so far as to bat her eyes innocently. "I have this inner-ear problem - I can't hear _morons_."

The speaker's face clouded over and he took a step toward her. "You better watch your mouth, mutie, or you'll be _sorry_."

She dropped the innocent act and gave them all a wide, not-nice grin. "How 'bout you losers step outside and I rearrange your faces?"

None of them seemed to know what to make of _that_. The speaker exchanged a thoroughly confused glance with his buddies, and one of them said, "Man, they did tear up the School Board building..."

The speaker shoved him. "Shut up! We're not afraid of them. We're not afraid of you," he informed Rogue.

She got right in his face and said, "Boo."

He stepped back quickly, alarmed, and she used the opportunity to slip out of their phalanx and into the crowd swelling the hallway.

Stupid football players - they could barely read the letters on their jackets, so she knew they'd never heard about Catcher In The Rye or Holden Caulfield. It was a shame, 'cause Holden's favorite slur - "phonies" - was perfect for most of the people in the school. Everyone was trying to be someone they weren't, except for the X-Men. And Risty.

Not for the first time, Rogue wondered where Risty had disappeared to.


	3. Evan

Truth? The comments from strangers didn't hurt. Hearing it from friends - that hurt. 

Evan slouched down in his desk chair, wishing the day would be over so he could get out of there and take out his frustration on the pavement. He'd be 'boarding alone, though, because his usual pack of fellow skaters had abruptly severed ties.

"You weren't that good anyway," they'd told him. And that _really_ stung, because he _was_ good. He was better at it than anything else, including school, including superhero-ing, and he considered himself a pretty good superhero.

It sucked. The whole thing sucked. The rawest of raw deals.

He'd thought Bayville was cool. No one cared that he was a black kid from the city with a juvie record - the first day he'd been there, he'd hooked up with the local skaters and they'd torn up some sidewalks. It was great.

_So what have we learned?_ he asked himself, drawing a meaningless picture in the margins of his notebook paper. _That Bayville doesn't care about skin color, just so long as you don't have an X-gene? Figures._

There was a sharp rap on his desk, inches in front of his face, and Evan looked up, startled. The teacher was standing over him, frowning. "Mr. Daniels. I understand you had a busy evening yesterday, but you really should try to pay more attention. Okay?"

He dropped his eyes back to the desk's surface and said, "Uh, yes ma'am."

The class had broken into half-whispers about mutants. More than a few people were snickering and looking smug. One kid's expression practically said, _Look at me, I'm normal, I don't get picked on by the teacher._

Evan wanted to bail. He wanted it more than anything in the world.

But he'd told his parents he wouldn't, because he was tough and he was honorable and he had a responsibility to all the mutant kids who'd ever go to public school in America. Sometimes he wished his parents were like other people and didn't study civil rights and quote famous black activists. The other X-Men thought he was just a mutant, but he wasn't. It went way beyond that. His burden was twice as heavy, and worse, he didn't have anyone to talk to about it, because Auntie O had grown up in Africa and didn't know.

He'd promised, yeah, and he'd meant it, but he wondered what would happen when he got sick and tired of dealing with all the hassle. Sometimes he thought the only thing really keeping him in Bayville was the Institute. At least he had teammates here - other people who had his back and could sort of understand. He didn't know anywhere else he could go and find that. Mutant communities weren't exactly widespread.

"Freak," the kid behind him hissed.

Evan clenched his jaw and kept his eyes on the teacher. He wasn't going to give.

The kid hissed "Freak," again, and jabbed Evan's back with the sharp end of a pencil. It took all his willpower, but Evan didn't react. Bones shifted inside his chest, grinding against each other from the effort of not reacting, and he didn't let _that_ show either.

And for his stoicism, he got jabbed again. And again. And again. The other kids nearby started giggling and egging his harasser on. The teacher, busy at the board explaining a concept Evan really needed to understand in order to pass the next test, never noticed.

He was sick of it already.


	4. Amara

Truth? Life just kept getting weirder and weirder. 

High school was a brave new world for Amara, and she hadn't had a lot of time to get used to it before everything had changed so drastically, but even she could see the difference.

After all, it was hard to miss, what with people acting like she had the plague.

She'd sat through the better part of three class periods, and the most interaction she'd had with anyone was the teacher taking attendance. It was confusing her in no small way. Sure, she wasn't popular. Sure, she didn't really know anyone, and they didn't really know her. That was no reason to shun her, or to whisper about her. _She_ hadn't done anything.

Amara bit her lip, torn between paying attention to the teacher and trying to eavesdrop on the conversation going on a few desks behind her.

The bell rang and she took her time gathering her things up, then slowly made her way to the front of the class. She was the last one out of the room - kind of stupid, she knew, because that gave any potential attackers a chance to set up a trap. The pre-departure talk Professor Xavier had given them all that morning had been explicit: they had to be very, _very_ careful at school.

So when someone in the hallway said, "Hey!" loudly, Amara whirled and barely reined in her instinctual fireball. A cluster of normal girls stood not far away, but pushing right past them was a missing member of the team and one of the few people Amara considered to be a real friend.

She was delighted. "Tabitha! Where did you go? We were looking for you-"

"Oh, I've been around," Tabby said, waving it off. As far as Amara was concerned, Tabby was the pinnacle of cool, and that casual dismissal just made her even cooler. "So how's mutant manor?"

"Being rebuilt," Amara said.

"Yeah, I could see that." Tabby cracked her gum, loudly, and gave the cluster of girls an arch look. "What's up, norms?"

"You're a mutant," one of them said, faintly accusing. "Both of you are."

"And you're an idiot, which makes us even," Tabby said, turning back around to Amara. "Go on, Amara."

"You should come back," Amara told her, choosing to ignore the side conversation. "Really. It's not the same."

Tabby shook her head, blowing a big purple-pink bubble before popping it. "I dunno. I don't think the team thing is really... me. I've been kicked off two now. That's gotta be some kind of record, huh?"

Amara looked down, disappointed. "Oh."

Tabby put an arm around her shoulders - the gesture of the big sister or the cousin that Amara wished she was. "Hey, I'll still be around. Where else am I gonna go?"

Amara almost said, "Home," then remembered at the last moment that Tabby going home was just as unlikely as she herself going home. Instead she shrugged and closed her mouth before anyone noticed.

"Oh, fine," Tabby said, releasing her with a hint of something like amusement. "I'll come hang with you guys every now and then, as long as no one tries to re-recruit me."

"Okay," Amara said, grinning.

"Can't split up the Sirens," Tabby added, winking. Amara's smile widened further. That had been so much fun - nevermind the part where they almost got arrested. She was just about to say so when Tabby straightened abruptly and said, "Uh-oh - administrator on the hunt. I gotta go. See ya!"

"Goodbye," Amara called out. Tabby waved, practically running down the hall. An administrator - she'd learned that you could tell who was a teacher and who wasn't because the office people wore suits - ran after her.

Amara shook her head, still amused. Tabby hadn't changed. There was some comfort in that.

"The Sirens? Like, the Bayville Sirens?" one of the girls asked, taking a step closer to Amara. "The ones that busted up the carjacker ring?"

"Yes, but we don't do that anymore," Amara said. She wasn't sure where this was going, so her answer was a little on the tentative side. "The police made us stop."

The girls looked at her for a moment, and then another one of them said, "That's so awesome. What are your powers?"

"I generate fire." There was more, but that was really all she felt like explaining. She started walking to her next class, and the girls moved with her.

"Ever burn anything down?"

It embarrassed her to say it, but she had. "Um... a few times. Not for a while, though."

"So what, you just snap your fingers and - _whoosh?_"

It wasn't exactly friendship, but it wasn't fear either, and Amara felt that Professor Xavier would be pleased. She couldn't fault them for asking questions; she was brimming with them herself, albeit about different subjects. Maybe they didn't need to be careful - maybe they just they needed to be nice.

She spent the rest of the walk being hopeful and providing the best answers she could.


	5. Scott

Truth? There were only a few things in the world that were worth earning the enmity of the entire football team. 

Luckily for Scott, one of those reasons was sitting across the cafeteria table from him right now.

"-picked _my_ piece to be recommended for display in the state congressional building," Jean was saying, eyes shining. She seemed happy but a little confused. That was okay - at least she was happy. This morning she'd been anything but. This transition was hard on all of them, but she'd had the most to lose. He understood. He knew what it was like to have your life ripped away.

Evan looked more confused than anything else. "Even after... everything?"

Jean nodded. "I brought that up, and she said, 'True art celebrates the individual, and individual differences. Being a mutant is no more reason to disregard your work than being an Impressionist.' "

"Wow. That's pretty enlightened."

"It doesn't mean that my stuff is going to get _chosen_ or anything, but you're right."

Scott caught sight of a trio of football players slowly but determinedly making their way toward the table. He sighed and gave up on eating, instead standing and saying, "Looks like my lunch is over already, unless I want it force-fed. I'll see you guys after school."

Jean cast a concerned look over her shoulder, scowled when she saw the football players, and turned back to face Scott. She looked like she was going to say something like, _I'm done too, let's get out of here_, and he was perfectly ready to accept.

But it was Kitty who stood and said, "Wait, I'll come with. I sorta need an escort to my next class anyway."

He raised his eyebrows at Jean; she shrugged and waved goodbye, a little disappointed, he thought. That might've been wishful thinking, but things were shifting between them, and some days it seemed like...

Kitty, artfully steering through the crush of lunchtime traffic to maximize space between them and the football players, broke him out of his thoughts with, "Yesterday a bunch of kids were waiting at that one hallway, you know, where you can't see around the corner, and they seriously tried to, like, grab me."

"Oh?" he asked, which he knew would get her to keep talking, and listened with half his attention as they navigated the halls.

This was his school as much as it was anyone's - he'd gone there for four years, or close to it, and he'd worked hard the entire time. His grades before had been nothing special, with more Cs on his report cards than anything else, but Professor Xavier expected him to work hard, and he never wanted to disappoint the professor. Which meant that he now had the highest GPA of anyone in his class, even if he didn't make a big deal out of it. A perfect 4.0, unweighted, that skyrocketed much higher when all of his AP and Honors courses were factored in.

Maybe half of the seniors knew who he was, but he would've been valedictorian. Now he had the sinking feeling that his four years of hard work would not be rewarded, or even recognized. He didn't mind being different - he'd been different all his life: military brat, orphan, mutant. It was all the same. But being ignored because he was different... no, that wasn't cool.

"Scott?" Kitty asked, sounding slightly annoyed, and he realized that _she'd _realized that he wasn't paying attention.

"What?"

She bit her lip. "Can I ask you about... Um, nothing."

He waited.

"Okay, so like, you're a guy," she finally said, the words bursting out. "And I know you hate Lance's guts, but could you please try to tell me what's up with him and this whole attitude change? I mean, it makes no sense!"

_Whoa boy_, he thought. On a scale of things he didn't want to be confronted with, this was pretty high up there - right above _a quarterback holding a grudge and a two-by-four._ "Uh... shouldn't you be talking to Jean or Rogue or someone about this?"

She made a face. "No, because they're not guys! Weren't you listening?"

No, he was trying to avoid the conversation. Scott took a step back, stalling for all he was worth. "Uh, well, I think that... maybe..."

And Kitty lost her patience. "Ugh! Nevermind. Geez. You're all the same."

She stalked into her classroom, leaving him in the hallway. He breathed a sigh of relief, checked his watch, and decided he had just enough time to get back to the cafeteria and walk Jean to class.


	6. Kitty

Truth? Love _sucked_.

Kitty had resigned herself a long time ago to never finding a boy who would actually like her. She was cute, and fashionable, and liked to party, but she was also a freak. Even before she started walking through walls, she'd been way too smart. The school had wanted her to skip a few grades, but her parents had refused. It didn't help, though. Kitty was still a brain - and brains never got boyfriends.

But then she'd fallen out of her locker and right into Lance.

He was probably the first guy without glasses and a _Star Trek_ fixation who'd really _talked_ to her in years. When she went to the Institute, she'd been sad that he wasn't going to be there. But he was - even if he was on the wrong side - and it all seemed like fate had stepped in to give her the perfect chance at true love. The fact that he was one of the bad guys only made it more romantic. _So_ 'Romeo and Juliet.'

Her mom had always said, "Men make plans and God laughs." She should've listened to her mom. And she should've paid more attention to the _end_ of 'Romeo and Juliet.'

Kitty stabbed her pencil at the notebook in front of her. She was pretty well past the sadness and moving through anger. Weren't there, like, nine stages of grief? She had a long way to go, then.

She couldn't _believe_ that he'd had the _nerve_ to say that she thought he wasn't good enough for her! She'd _never_ thought that. If she had, she wouldn'tve talked to him on the phone, or gone malling with him, or asked him to the dance, or any of that. He'd saved her life - well, he'd _tried_ - and he'd even tried joining the X-Men to be with her. That kind of stuff... it was all so romantic. He was a thug, yeah, but she had believed from the beginning that he was a thug with a heart of gold. Stupid her. Heart of stone was more like it.

The teacher started calling on people to answer questions, and Kitty tried to look invisible. She didn't want to answer questions. She had no idea what they were even covering today. Last night, instead of doing homework, she'd gone to bed early and cried herself to sleep.

Romeo and Juliet got divorced and Juliet had to fight him in battle because Romeo was on a total evil power trip. That was how it really worked.

Love _sucked_.

"Kitty," Ms. Hawkins said. "Maybe you can tell us."

Kitty snapped to attention and did her best not to look like a deer caught in headlights. "Um... tell you what?"

"The answer to problem twenty-nine," Ms. Hawkins said, scowling a little. "Unless you'd like to go back to daydreaming."

Fortunately, her math book was open to the right page, and fortunately, problem twenty-nine was a cinch. She glanced at it, pretended to find the answer on a nonexistent sheet of homework, and rattled off the solution.

That was _one_ advantage to having a giant brain.

The teacher looked appeased but not happy. Kitty sat with her back straight and her hands folded attentively over her textbook, following the teacher's every movement with wide, alert eyes until the woman stopped glancing in her direction. Then she went back to stabbing the notebook with her pencil.

She hated Lance. She loved Lance.

She didn't know _what_ she felt.

She was having the worst day of her _life_.

* * *

This is a short chapter, so it's the perfect place to give some feedback to my reviewers, whom I worship and adore despite the fact that I never tell them so because I have major issues about sending "thank-yous"! Yay! 

First, some clarifying: Any student requiring special services falls under the umbrella of ESE (Exceptional Student Education), which runs from "gifted" to TMH (look it up) and everything in between. Gifted students receive an EP instead of an IEP, and are of course viewed with a different set of expectations, but they are still ESE. I thought I addressed that in Jean's chapter, but repetition can never hurt.

Second, a correction: It was Jubilee and Rahne who left at the beginning of "Mainstream". Trust me - I watched it enough times to know. :)

Third, a general statement: The BOM will not be getting a voice in this fic. Further, they have a low presence in all of my stories because... um... I don't really like the Brotherhood. Not in the same way I like the X-Men - which is to say, with a fanatical devotion that borders on the frightening. Sorry.


	7. Kurt

Truth? Being a superhero and being a coward weren't mutually exclusive. 

Amanda hadn't called him a coward yet, but Kurt knew it was only a matter of time. Just like Kitty and apparently _all_ of his friends and teammates, she wanted him to stop using his image inducer; to show the world what he really looked like, to finish coming out of the mutant closet. And that was okay for Amanda, because she thought he was fuzzy and cute - which he was, of course - but the rest of Bayville would have a different mindset.

He knew. He'd grown up a freak. He hadn't liked it then and he highly doubted he would like it any more now. And if the others thought he was a coward - Well, there was a difference between being a coward and being prudent. He told himself that even as he knew, in his heart, that he was being cowardly and selfish to boot.

"And I thought that was completely out of line," Amanda said, finishing her story, and Kurt nodded in agreement even though he had missed the rest of it. It wasn't that he didn't think her stories weren't important; he thought _everything_ about her was important. She was two steps short of walking on water.

No, he was just too busy scanning the hallways for potential danger. The final bell had rung, and everyone was heading home; the perfect time for trouble. So far, there was no sign of anything, but he was wary all the same.

"Oh!" she exclaimed suddenly coming to a halt in the middle of the hallway and grabbing his arm to make him stop, too. "I totally forgot. I need my English book for the homework tonight. Will you miss your ride if you come with me?"

Kurt glanced at the entrance to the school, which was currently clogged with students exiting en masse. Scott was waiting across the street with the Institute's only working car, and he never liked to sit around for more than a few minutes. "Ah... probably. But it doesn't matter. I have my own transportation built in."

She smiled. "Better than a car any day."

"And way more stylish," he added, grinning and brushing back his hair. She giggled, which always did wonders for his ego, and he offered her his arm as a gentleman should.

"Good," she said, taking his arm and pulling him along down the hallway to her locker. "I feel safer with an escort, you know."

He had to laugh at that. "You're probably safer _without _me."

She pushed him slightly, making him step sideways but not releasing his arm. "Kurt... don't start. If a couple of people can't accept you for what you are, then they're morons."

By "a couple of people", she meant the football team. Out of the entire school population, they seemed the most inclined to cause problems. Everyone else was just kind of steering clear. But some of the football players had grafitti'd the Institute two nights before, Duncan had attacked Scott twice yesterday, and, Kurt had learned at lunch, another pack of them had tried to corner Rogue earlier in the day.

"Yes, but they're morons who bench-press over two hundred pounds on a regular basis," he countered.

She smiled briefly, then cleared her throat. "You know, in sixth grade, I got picked on all year by the girl's basketball team."

He looked at her askance. "Why?"

"Because my dad is black and my mom isn't." At his somewhat blank look she rolled her eyes. "I'm _mixed_, Kurt. Biracial. Whatever. It's not a popular thing to be. The fact that I'm smart and pretty and don't care about what people think - none of that helps."

They reached her locker and she paused in front of it, twisting a strand of hair around one finger like she did when she was nervous. "So they picked on me, but they weren't the first ones and I'm positive they won't be the last. So I know how you feel."

That was news to him. After growing up blue and with a tail, superficial differences like ethnicity tended to lose their importance. Besides, his parents had always said that everyone was a child of God and equally precious in His eyes; Kurt had never been sure that extended to mutants, but he had no problem applying it to humans. "I guess..."

"But you can't hide because some people are narrow-minded," she said firmly. She turned to open the lock, spinning the numbers of her combination into place, and Kurt idly glanced around the hallway. And spotted trouble.

Amara was standing at her locker a few yards away, surrounded by a group of normal girls. The girls were talking with her about something, and Amara looked happy enough, but she'd only been in the real world for a short time, and the backstabbing ways of high-school girls weren't part of her education. Yet.

"Amanda!" he hissed, grabbing her arm and making her jump.

"What?" she asked, more than a little annoyed, and also a little alarmed.

He ducked behind her locker door, crowding her shamelessly - she _was_ his girlfriend, after all - and pointed. "Over there."

She looked. "Okay. I'm looking at -?"

He stepped from behind the locker door just enough to allow Amanda a clear view of the girls and his hapless teammate. "Those girls - they're talking to Amara!"

A wave of laughter swept the group, and Amara beamed.

_Like a lamb to the slaughter_, Kurt thought. She was so clueless, and those girls - they might as well have been wearing devils' horns.

Amanda didn't even watch them long enough to notice. She looked back at Kurt, a puzzled frown on her face, and whispered, "Why are we whispering?"

He resisted the urge to smack his forehead and exclaim "Duh!" Instead, he went for the more neutral, "Because I don't want them to _hear_."

"Okay," she said again, but in a far different tone.

"Look," he said, "Amara doesn't know about... people. Someone needs to go save her."

Amanda slammed the locker shut suddenly, nearly catching Kurt's ear in the process. "Kurt! Stop _projecting!_"

"Projecting?" he repeated, raising his eyebrows. The first thing that came to mind was his inducer, and for an angry moment he got ready to argue, again, why he wasn't turning it off. But just as quickly he realized that wasn't what Amanda meant. "Oh, right. _Intro to Psych_ rears its ugly head."

"You know I'm right." She stabbed a finger into his chest for emphasis. "Just because people treated you badly, you're assuming those girls are going to do the same thing to Amara. That's every bit as bad as hating someone for their skin color. Or - or their genes. Prejudice goes both ways."

Kurt opened his mouth to protest, then shut it and blinked at her. She was right. And because he was man enough to admit when he was wrong, he hung his head, sighed, and said, "You're right."

"Well, duh." Amanda took his arm again, all traces of anger gone, and gave him a big, dazzling smile that sent his heart soaring. "So take me somewhere where I can see that cute blue face of yours, Kurt."

He grinned. And they walked out of the school without a backwards glance at Amara. Not because he was selfish, and not because he was a coward, but because there were people in the world who weren't out for mutant blood. Maybe they were hard to spot, but they were there. Sometimes you just had to have faith.

But he still wasn't turning off his inducer.


	8. Principal Kelly

Note: And this is it! The end of this fic, at last. Thank you again to everyone who reviewed. I don't need feedback to live, but it does warm the soul. :)

* * *

Truth? The situation was growing more infuriating by the moment.

Principal Kelly stood at his office window, arms crossed and a scowl on his face, watching the procession of Institute students leaving the campus. Other students - _normal_ students - stood on the sidewalk and grass, well back from the departing mutants. Some were shouting. A few were throwing paper wads and soda cans.

None of the mutants seemed to notice, or care, even when the small projectiles hit them.

Kelly seethed. Didn't they see? Couldn't they tell they weren't wanted? Hadn't he made it abundantly clear that their kind was _not welcome_ in _his_ school?

The mutants unhurriedly crossed the street, even as the normal students increased their attack. The second the mutants' feet hit the other side, Grey flung a hand up and all of the flying objects went zooming off in impossible directions.

Just like that shotput ball. Another few inches lower in its trajectory, and it would've cracked his skull instead of cratering his desk. And then there was the earthquake in the gym on his first day, and the half-remembered soccer game, and the monsters running loose at the dance, and the "mysteriously" exploded soda machines all over the school, and McCoy's rampage...

He stepped away from the window and sat down at his desk - his _new_ desk, because the previous one had been too damaged to repair. Not dangerous? Ha!

There was a folder on his desk that he didn't recognize, so he opened it first, slightly curious. After flipping through the pages inside, his curiosity gave way to fury, and he abruptly stood and stormed out of the office. "When did this arrive?" he demanded of his secretary, waving the folder.

Dorothy jumped, startled, but recovered quickly and said, "While you were talking with the guidance counselors about-"

Kelly didn't wait to hear the rest, but went back into his office, slamming the door behind him. This time, he went straight to the phone and dialed a number he'd never wanted to know in the first place. He was furious. He was _beyond_ furious.

"Xavier Institute," a voice said by way of greeting; Professor Xavier himself.

"What is this?" Kelly snapped. "What are you trying to pull with this trick?"

"I'm afraid I don't understand, Mr. Kelly."

Kelly slapped the folder down on the desk. "THIS! The recommendation that your students be staffed into ESE!"

"They do meet the requirements."

Kelly laughed - a short, incredulous sound, even to his ears. "Those requirements are for children with learning disabilities and physical handicaps, not your _mutants_."

"I think that if you look at the enclosed medical and psychological evaluations, you will see that I am not fabricating any of this. They all require special services and accommodations."

Kelly flipped through the pages again, trying to find one that he could exploit against Xavier. In the momentary gap, the mutant said, "For example, Scott does need accommodations in testing due to his vision problems."

" 'Vision problems'? He shoots lasers out of his eyes!"

"And can only see in shades of red. Certain styles and colors of type are very difficult for him to make out."

Kelly conceded defeat on that one - which he hadn't brought up anyway. Typical for Xavier to pick an argument he knew he would win. Instead, he found two that seemed to be so patently absurd that Xavier had no hope of defending them. And he started with the file for one of the school's basketball stars. _Former_ stars. "You're trying to pass Daniels off as 'other health impaired'?"

"Evan has skeletal abnormalities."

Kelly bit down on his tongue to keep from saying something he might regret later, in front of the review board Xavier would most certainly report him to. Tasting blood and the bitterness of inevitable defeat, he moved onto his next attack and ground out, "Grey is not emotionally handicapped. I've never seen a student less likely to be EH than she is!"

"Nevertheless," Xavier said, his tone infuriatingly calm, "she was diagnosed as schizophrenic - a diagnosis which the state of Connecticut still supports, if you care to check."

"I don't."

"Is there anything else, Mr. Kelly?"

"Yes. I'm going to do everything in my power to block this."

"I'm sorry to hear that. Your time would be much better spent in service of your students, as opposed to chasing down an impossible goal."

"Keeping _my_ students safe by keeping _your_ students away is not an impossible goal!"

"I must inform you that it is. I have already brought the matter to the state Department of Education, and they agree that if the students meet the qualifications, you must allow them to be placed. They are not willing to risk a lawsuit or the loss of federal funds that would surely result from barring duly staffed special-needs students from services. I expect the mandate should be arriving on your desk shortly."

Kelly was too incensed to speak. What was more, he did not trust himself to speak, so he slammed the phone down onto its cradle. The file folder stared up at him from the desk, mocking him, mocking his inability to handle what should have been a simple matter. With an angry, incoherent shout, he swept it off the desk.

The pages fluttered around, but he didn't care. He had to _think_. He had to come up with a plan, some way to get past this roadblock... A idea came to him, pure and brilliant in its elegance. It would take time to come to fruition, and patience, but like any good school employee, he had plenty of patience.

Significantly calmer now, Kelly gathered up the fallen papers, laid the folder back on his desk, and sat down. The first order of business was to deal with those mutants he _could_ take action against. Xavier's protection did not extend to everyone, after all.

Alvers and his crew had seen the inside of Bayville High for the last time. Kelly started filling out the paperwork to have them expelled, all the while thinking about his newly-born plan.

Truth?

The X-Men were in more trouble than they knew.


End file.
